Remarketing vs retargeting: what it is and how to set it up well

Most people who visit an online shop leave without buying. Remarketing is how you reach them again, and it is often the cheapest customer you can win, as long as it is set up with some care.

Remarketing or retargeting?

In everyday use the words mean the same thing: showing ads to people who already interacted with your business. Historically, retargeting meant display ads based on website visits (cookies and pixels), while remarketing was Google’s name for it and also covered email to existing contacts. In practice, both mean: reach people who already know you.

Where it runs

• Google Ads: remarketing lists for search, display, YouTube and Performance Max.
• Meta (Facebook and Instagram): custom audiences from website visitors, app users and customer lists.
• Email and SMS to people who left their contact.
• Dynamic remarketing: ads that show the exact products someone viewed. It needs a product feed and the right events on product pages.

Audiences that usually work

1. Cart and checkout abandoners from the last 7–14 days. They were closest to buying.
2. Product viewers from the last 30 days, ideally with dynamic ads.
3. Past customers for a second purchase, timed to when the product runs out or the season changes.
4. Engaged visitors (several pages, long visit) as a wider layer.

Mistakes that make remarketing expensive

• Not excluding buyers. People who just bought keep seeing ads for the same product. Always exclude recent customers from acquisition-type remarketing.
• Too wide and too long. Everyone who visited in the last 540 days is not a warm audience.
• The same ad forever. Frequency climbs, results fall. Rotate creatives and cap frequency.
• Taking credit for sales that would happen anyway. Remarketing to brand-new visitors who were already going to buy looks great in reports. Compare with a holdout group, or at least look at new vs returning customers.
• Missing events. Dynamic remarketing without product view events on product pages simply does not have data to work with.

A simple setup for an e-shop

• Measurement first: product view, add to cart, begin checkout and purchase events, with product IDs that match your feed.
• Three audiences: cart abandoners (14 days), product viewers (30 days), buyers (180 days, excluded).
• One remarketing campaign per platform, with its own small budget, so you can see what it brings.
• Creatives that answer the likely objection: shipping cost, delivery time, returns, reviews.

How to know if it works

Look at the cost per purchase from remarketing next to your normal cost per customer, and check how many of those buyers were new. Remarketing should be your cheapest channel. If it is not, the audiences are too wide or you are paying for sales you would have had anyway.

Remarketing is one of the first things we check in a growth audit.